Bayliss, Jones & Bayliss

William Bayliss, the founder of the firm, was born in 1803 into a Shropshire family who moved to Priestfield, where he was born. His father Moses came from Benthall Edge, his mother came from Horsehay. He worked for Samuel Ferriday who owned coal mines and an ironworks at Priestfield. Moses was a blacksmith who had his own blacksmith's shop and looked after the mine pumping engines. Much of his work was for the miners, sharpening their picks, shoeing their horses and repairing hand tools.

William was the third of eleven children. He disliked school and left as soon as possible. Before his tenth birthday he was working seven days a week in one of Samuel Ferriday's mine pumping engines. Although an easy job, he was left much to his own devices, and rarely saw anyone else. He particularly disliked working at night when he had to walk in the dark, to or from the engine.

A simplified family tree.

When William was around eleven years of age his father moved his business to Monmore Green to look after Mr. Ferriday's engines there, and William worked on one of the pumping engines on the site. When he was about fifteen years old he began working on a winding engine, which meant that he didn't have to work on Sundays. His father wanted him to improve himself and so found him a job as a blacksmith. Work was much harder in the blacksmith's shop, but it was not so lonely, and much more enjoyable. Around this time he became a devout Christian which would soon dominate his life.

William gradually took over his father's business. He was an efficient lad and when he started keeping records and introduced "pay on the nail", it excused his dad the Saturday journey around the public houses trying to get his mining customers to pay their bills.

It carries the following lettering:
Bayliss & Co. Wolverhampton.

In 1825, at the age of twenty one, William married one of his Sunday school teachers. She was a regular member of the Wesleyan Chapel in John Street, Ettingshall, where he was class leader of the weekly prayer meetings. They moved into a house in George Street, Ettingshall and over a period of around twenty five years had 14 children, but ten of them died young. The survivors were two daughters, and two sons, William and Samuel, who later joined the firm.

A few months later his father suddenly died. William took over the business, but as well as his work in the blacksmith's shop, he had to carry out repairs on the mine pumping engines. It was extremely dangerous work. Many people were killed or injured in mine shafts as a result of brick or rock falls. They were dry-bricked, or un-bricked where there was rock or coal. The shafts were deep with three rod-operated pumps. The lowest pumped water into a cistern, the second pumped water from the cistern into a second cistern, and the third pumped the water to the surface.

An advert from 1914.

William saved hard and bought a large plot of wasteland in Cable Street, Wolverhampton where he established the Victoria Works in 1826. He began to produce iron products including sheep hurdles, railings, gates, stable fittings, ornamental ironwork and chains for mining and shipping.

Sadly William's first wife died young. She discovered a lump in one her breasts, and had a mastectomy. Although successful, other cancerous growths appeared in her lungs. A little while after her death he married again. His second wife had previously married and had a daughter from her first marriage.

William entered into a business partnership, but was having health problems caused by the smoke and sulphurous fumes that were often in the air at Ettingshall. Because of his chest complaint he was unable to cope at work, and felt that his partners were taking advantage of him. After a disagreement in 1853 the partnership was dissolved.

Eventually his brother Moses, who had been a nut and bolt maker at Providence Works, Darlaston, joined him in the venture. The two firms were amalgamated as W. & M. Bayliss of Victoria Works, Monmoor Green and Providence Works, Darlaston, with a London office at 43 Fish Street Hill, Eastcheap. In 1859 they were joined by Edwin Jones, an iron trader from South Wales who had previously married William's daughter, Jane. The partnership then became Bayliss, Jones and Bayliss.

The new machine shop in 1949.

Traditional methods still in use in 1953.

It seems that Moses went to America to introduce the rolling of corrugated sheet iron, but this can't be verified. However, Moses was the father of Wolverhampton born Sir William Maddock Bayliss, who later became a distinguished physiologist. In 1902, at University College London, with E.H. Starling, he discovered the hormone secretin and established the role of hormones. Secretin is used today as an intervention for autism.

Sir William was also a non-executive director of Bayliss, Jones & Bayliss.

In 1873 a Wolverhampton Trade Directory lists William, the founding member of the firm, as living in Oaks Crescent.

William moved there to get away from the smoke and fumes in Monmore Green.

He had been advised to “move to the fresher atmosphere of Wolverhampton”. Oaks Crescent was on the edge of a rural district. His journal expresses his pleasure at the blossoming trees, the clean air and the singing of the birds in the garden of his new home. A few years later, his doctors advised him to retire to the south. The family initially moved to Clifton, but because of the smoke and fog there they moved again to Torquay, where William lived until his death in 1878.

One of the company's large machines.

An advert from 1953.

An advert from 1935.

Cable Street. From the 1928 catalogue.

Samuel, his brother, was more active and worked in the pattern shop of the foundry. William would later become chairman and be succeeded by Samuel in 1925.

Victoria Works. From the 1928 catalogue.

Monmoor Rolling Mills. From the 1928 catalogue.

It is believed that George Adams still continued to manage the works as well as running his own nearby iron works.

In 1901 the company was floated on the Stock Exchange, but in the early 1920s sales fell and problems followed. Sales to the railway companies were the worst affected, although the fencing side of the business suffered as well.

A typical large fabrication made at the works.

Around 1922 Thomas Swift Peacock, representing the G.K.N. Group of Companies, negotiated the purchase of Bayliss, Jones and Bayliss. Peacock was in charge of the group’s Atlas Works in Darlaston. The G.K.N. Board had given him full control of the nut and bolt and railway fastening departments of the Midlands.

Though a subsidiary of G.K.N. from 1922, the company kept its own name and the Bayliss family continued to provide its management. It is generally understood that Mr. Jones, who was still in control of the London offices, forced the issue by declaring his willingness to sell his portion of shares to G.K.N. Mr Jones' son Edwin, his son-in-law, Sir Murray Hyslop and finally his grandson Roy Hyslop, followed him in managing the London office and showrooms, which had expanded to 139-141 Cannon Street by 1938.

A special purpose BJB swaging machine.

Under Thomas Peacock, in 1927 and 1928, a new screw rolling shop opened, the bolt works were reorganised to make production more efficient and a new mill for the conversion of billet into bar, opened at Monmoor Works.

The company seems to have concentrated more on the fencing, railing and general ornamental ironwork side.  In the great slump of 1929-30 they were hit hard but recovered strongly from the mid 1930s, which were the company’s most successful years.

Samuel Bayliss died in 1932. His sons, P.S. and F.W. Bayliss, joined the board in 1921 and 1925 respectively, and they became the joint managing directors in 1928.

The company continued to produce high quality ornamental ironwork such as gates, fences, balustrading, railings, and tree guards, and became well known for its products.

A large proportion of the work at this time was for county councils, carrying out their 'improvements' of substituting railings for hedges. Demand for balustrading to span the many new bridges extending over Britain's motorways also kept the firm busy.

The Forging Shop built in the late 1950s.

An advert from 1927.

The products which the 1953 Wolverhampton Official Handbook mentions include:  plain and ornamental wrought iron fencing; for railways - black bolts and nuts, screw spikes, chair bolts, fishbolts and other fastenings;  equipment for overhead telegraph and telephone lines; fabricated steelwork; general forgings;  agricultural equipment - tractor toolbars, heavy tractor cultivators, plough beams and brackets, hay rake frames, etc.; and a recently created department for the welded steel fabrication of machinery frames, bed-plates, mill plant, constructional steelwork, agricultural implements, containers, stillages, hoppers and guards.

The company's steel rolling mills, with a capacity of 1,000 tons per week, were kept busy, as orders for miles of railings at a time were not uncommon. The amount of metal being used in the works must have been enormous. The modern galvanising shop had a capacity of 350 tons per week and was not only used for the company's own products, but also did outside work.

The Managing Director at the time was Mr. Roy M. Hyslop, the great grandson of Mr. Jones, one of the company's founders.

At this time the company had a wide variety of customers, including local authorities, architects, power stations, the Admiralty, the war Office, the Ministry of Works, the Air Ministry, and private companies.

The company produced rail fastenings for British Rail and designed various types of fasteners, mostly resilient fastenings for long welded rails. In addition to their standard lines of railings and gates, they also made one-off pieces to the designs of the individual customer, or very often, his or her architect.

It had a polished wood block floor to enable the dining area to be quickly converted into a dance floor for evening events.

The canteen.

The dining room.

The serving hatches can be seen along the right-hand wall.

A Peco 25 MR injection moulding machine.

A GKN 'Unimate' industrial robot.

Early contracts for GKN Machinery included a 235 ton double-side trimming shear, capable of trimming plates from ¼ inch to 1½ inch thickness, and the world's most advanced heavy plate mill, the biggest of its kind in the country. It could deliver up to 8,000 tons of standard quality steel plate per week.

A double side-trimming shear under construction.

Many large new machine tools were installed, some featuring a digital readout, which was new technology in the late 1960s.

The product range also included power presses, inspection equipment for steel billets and slabs, welded chassis and body assembly for fork lift trucks, tool drawer bars, linkages for tractors and the 'Birfeed' range of automatic bar feeding and loading magazines.

In the late 1960s the Metal Forming Plant Division obtained a computer using the I.B.M. Kraus system. The machine was used for costing orders and to trace the progression of orders through the works.

Cyril Banton. Courtesy of his daughter, Nina McCarthy.

Cyril was originally an electrical engineer until 1963 when his predecessor Bert Denny retired. Cyril was involved in several large projects during the modernisation of the works, including the new rolling mill and the machine and assembly shop.

By 1970 the rolling mills were run by James Mills Limited and the Metal Forming Plant Division were producing sophisticated servo-hydraulic control systems. One order, worth £250,000 was for a control system for a large rolling mill for Germany's most prominent producer of tin plate and cold reduced steel strip, Rasselstein A.G. of Neuwied/Rhein.

It all came to an end in the 1980s when GKN decided to close the steel side of the business and so the works were sold.

This article is based on the following:
An article written by Helen Priddey, which can be found in the Museum Metalware Hall on this website.
The History of GKN, volume 2 by Edgar Jones.
Material from Nina McCarthy whose father worked for the company.
Various Wolverhampton Handbooks.
Bayliss, Jones & Bayliss catalogues.